(pictured) True lamp of Florence Nightingale. Turkish concertina lantern/ fanous.[*] This type of lantern was used by Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, although illustrations of the 'lady with the lamp' often show a different lamp. When Florence died in 1910 at 90, the international nursing community of the time wished to pay tribute to the life and work of this great nurse. The International Council of Nurses (ICN) Congress, in Cologne in 1912, announced the idea of Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) to be established as a living memorial to Florence. It was not until the 1929 ICN Grand Council meeting in Montreal that the memorial proposal was activated.
Florence Nightingale died peacefully in her sleep in her room at 10 South Street, Mayfair, London, on 13 August 1910, at the age of 90[1]. The offer of burial in Westminster Abbey was declined by her relatives and she is buried in the graveyard at St Margaret's Church in East Wellow, Hampshire, near Embley Park. She left a large body of work, including several hundred notes that were previously unpublished. A memorial monument to Nightingale was created in Carrara marble by Francis William Sargant in 1913 and placed in the cloister of the Basilica of Santa Croce, in Florence, Italy
[*] This lantern is made out of two copper bowls. White linen is suspended between the bowls. Thin metal wires reinforce the linen so that it folds and unfolds, like an accordion. The lower copper bowl forms a tray to hold a candle and the top bowl has an opening. When the two bowls are together with the linen folds, a candle can be placed in the holder in the bottom bowl. The candle is lit, and the linen, folded open, separates the two copper bowls. The linen surrounds the lit candle, protecting it from draughts and allowing light to shine through the mesh. The top bowl has a pierced pattern, which allows light out but keeps draughts out. The opening has a domed lid attached to the carrying handle. This lid is moved by a simple sideways action. The handle allows the lamp to be carried, and a hook on the handle allows the lamp to be hung from the ceiling, or on a light hook or the branch of a tree. The linen is only completely unfolded when the lamp is suspended by its hook or handle, as the weight of the lower copper bowl keeps it hanging steady.
Mavi Boncuk | SOURCE | Philip A. Mackowiak[2] Article
Florance Nightingale had a decidedly strange illness, one that has stubbornly defied diagnosis since her death on this day 95 years ago. In all likelihood, its seed was sown in 1854, when in her mid-30s, she traveled to Skutari (Uskudar), Turkey to care for British soldiers fighting the Russians in what came to be known as the Crimean War. With a mere 38 nurses, she supervised the care of an all but endless stream of troops wracked by frostbite, gangrene, dysentery, and other diseases crammed into 4 miles of beds not 18 inches apart. Her own quarters were cramped and infested with rodents and vermin. During January and February of her first winter, she saw 3,000 of her patients die, while working 20 hours a day, caring for the severest cases herself. In May of the following year, she developed a near-fatal illness (most likely brucellosis). Although urged to return to England to recuperate, she remained with the Army for 21 months until the last soldier had left for home.
Florence Nightingale. Image Credit: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Image Credit: “Florence Nightingale.” Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
When she finally returned to England, she appeared hardened and aged by illness and exhaustion. She complained of intermittent fever, loss of appetite, fatigue, insomnia, irritability, depression, sciatica, shortness of breath, and palpitations. For nearly three decades, these complaints kept her confined to her room, scarcely ever out of bed. Finally, in her 60s, her symptoms began to dissipate, and the cold, obsessed, and tyrannical workaholic Nightingale had been as an invalid gradually transformed into a gentle matron capable of something close to normal relationships with friends and family. She died non compos mentis at age 90 of “old age and heart failure.
Since Nightingale’s death, biographers, historians, nurses, and physicians have debated the cause of her strange illness, with some convinced that it had an organic basis and others convinced that her symptoms were the product of a neurosis. It has been suggested that she suffered from “dilation of the heart and neurasthenia;” a “strategic illness” with no physical basis; self-pity manifested as “Victorian melodrama;” and “repressed self-loathing” for her arrogance and ignorance in failing to recognize that the unsanitary condition of her wards was the reason why her army perished. In all likelihood, Nightingale had not one, but four different disorders, all at least loosely inter-related—bipolar personality disorder, Crimean fever (brucellosis), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and terminal, senile dementia (Alzheimer’s disease).
With regard to PTSD, there is no record of Nightingale ever having spoken or written of flashbacks or recurrent dreams of her Crimean experience. However she had no one with similar experiences or problems in whom she might have confided such thoughts or dreams. She never spoke of her wartime experiences after returning to England. Nor did she ever again personally minister to the sick or wounded, perhaps to avoid situations or activities likely to arouse traumatic Crimean memories. Like many of today’s PTSD sufferers, she isolated herself from social interactions, in her case by punishing herself for almost 30 years with what amounted to virtual self-imposed imprisonment.
Like all wars before and since, Nightingale’s was a hell steeped in the blackness of death, leaving no delight clean and pure, and torturing the minds of those involved long after the fighting ended.
Death Statistics of Florance Nightingale
When Florence Nightingale arrived at the British military hospital in Turkey in 1856, the scene was pretty grim. The mortality rate was high, and the hospital was chaotic—even the number of deaths was not recorded correctly. Florence Nightingale established much needed order and method within the hospital’s statistical records.
She also collected a lot of new data. In doing so, Nightingale learned that poor sanitary practices were the main culprit of high mortality in hospitals. She was determined to curb such avoidable deaths. By using applied statistical methods, she made a case for eliminating the practices that contributed to the unsafe and unhealthy environment. Her work in statistics saved lives.
Data Visualization
Tables and diagrams fill the pages of Nightingale’s notes and records. Hundreds of years before the Adobe Creative Cloud hit the market and “infographics” were something we all needed, Nightingale made data beautiful.
Her most famous design, which we use in varying forms today, was the “coxcomb.” The coxcomb is similar to a pie chart, but more intricate. In a pie chart the size of the ‘slices’ represent a proportion of data, while in a coxcomb the length, which the slice extends radially from the center-point, represents the first layer of data.
The specific organization of Nightingale’s chart allowed her to represent more complex information layered in a single space. In her coxcomb during the Crimean War, the chart was divided evenly into 12 slices representing months of the year, with the shaded area of each month’s slice proportional to the death rate that month. Her color-coding shading indicated the cause of death in each area of the diagram.
[1] Death of Miss Florence Nightingale.
Monday 15 August 1910guardian.co.uk
We greatly regret to announce that Miss Florence Nightingale, memorable for her work as organiser and inspirer of the Crimean War nursing service, died at her home in London somewhat unexpectedly on Saturday afternoon.
The cause of death was heart failure. Two members of her family were present when Miss Nightingale passed away. The funeral will take place in the course of the next few days, and will be of the quietest possible character, in accordance with Miss Nightingale's expressed wish.
Saving the army
Miss Nightingale had barely arrived before the wounded from Inkerman began to stream into the hospital. In about six weeks 8,000 patients had been sent to Scutari from the Crimea - to say nothing of those who had been left in the hospitals when the expedition started. There was not room for so much as half the number. The beds in the hospitals literally touched each other. It was often difficult to reach one wounded man without walking over the body of his comrade.
Rats invaded the wards, and ran with impunity among the living and the dead. Hundreds of men perished through merely breathing the air of the place. The rate of mortality from all causes was indeed frightful. If it had continued as it stood in the month of February, 1855, over four times the entire hospital population of that period would have perished in the one year. In the Crimea matters were just as bad in degree. While the 8,000 British were lying at Scutari, about half the number lay prostrate at Balaclava in much the same condition of helpless misery.
In point of fact, the task before Florence Nightingale was nothing less than to save the British army. Without her, or at any rate without some such labour as that which she undertook, our generals would soon have been left without a single man. Her efforts were proportioned to the greatness of the occasion. The cleansing and adaptation of the hospital, the establishment of a laundry and of sick-diet kitchens, the supply of food and all kinds of necessaries, and the organisation of a regular system of nursing and a staff of nurses, for many had to be dismissed as incompetent - all this was planned and carried through under the terrible pressure of a constant race with death.
She was enabled by the liberality of the public at home to provide large quantities of stores and necessaries, the cost of which was in part repaid by Government, and the distribution of these and of the immense accumulation of gifts in kind from Great Britain was a heavy part of her work. Her exertions were not confined to the hospital in which she had taken up her quarters, but that one had, of course, a larger share of the advantage of her personal superintendence. Little by little, yet very rapidly if we consider the enormous amount of work to be done, it became a model institution of its kind.
[2] Philip A. Mackowiak is Emeritus Professor of Medicine and Carolyn Frenkil and Selvin Passen History of Medicine Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. He is also the author of Diagnosing Giants: Solving the Medical Mysteries of Thirteen Patients Who Changed the World.